Mind and Time

The mind chases ferociously what it cannot have. Since it believes in the existence of what it chases, this desperate hunt drives it insane. Since it cannot live with this knowledge, it created an elusive state of being, which it calls normal.

In its frenzy, the mind builds fantasies, which cast veils of comfort over the shortcomings of this self-created illusion. Reality and truth are barred behind perception. The epitome of ridiculousness neighs, when, with the help of the science of psychology, we permit ourselves our individual reality and truth.

Permanence and constancy are illusions of the mind. They are constructed by tying future and past together with the glimpse of the presence. It calls this progression: Time.

Time is an invention of the mind. It needs it for being able to function. Otherwise, it would go crazy, really crazy. It does not really know crazy is.

The mind is at its best when validating itself. Reality includes sunrises and sunsets, days, years and the cycles of seasons and life. We built sundials and atomic clocks to measure it. We know and consistently prove, what we measure is real.

Reality also encompasses money, security, freedom and free will, culture, science and history. I hear you prove to me such matters, which only proves what I said before.

About Normal Life

After birth, the first thought, or call it an impression, we have as a newborn is: “I am alive.” This is all we know and no matter what, we want to keep it this way. Why? Because we don’t know anything else and everything else is frightfully scary.

We do everything to hang onto life. The best, the safest we feel is when things don’t change when the flow of circumstances remains steady, reliably predictable, and constant and if it absolutely has varies then only in small increment, please.

We clutch onto this belief, our mind reinforces it through validation and thus constructs human’s leading and most powerful motivation. There is nothing we don’t do for consistency and predictability.

Through threatening consistency, authorities gain absolute power over people. (What are authorities? They are people, too. Why do they do this to others?) Promising them consistency, now and after, in an acceptable way or in a way, which has become acceptable, people surrender willingly.

Today, insurance organisations hold the most money, (religions ensure your afterlife!). They invented paper money, an illusionary value because the limited amount of available gold limited their potential of possessing money and hoarding wealth, wealth, which is not connected with any tangible value. It is a number, and they wanted the potential to let this number grow without limitations.

Even before the church, they discovered that they could charge for taking over risk. Putting a value in something matterless and selling it for thousands of years. What a profound understanding of human nature.

After we are lured into this structure, we even believe, life is predictable. Have you ever wondered, who and what makes our life repetitive and therefore, predictable?

§

Then, out of the blue, something unpredictable happens… unpredictable, but still within the realm of probability or at least, possibility. No problem, for the last years we have paid for our safety, and after a short time all is back to normal, or at least that is what we want to believe.

However, sometimes things do not return to normal, the way it had been before. We may have had a serious accident. This throws us off our previous track. Still, after some time, we get used to the new condition, and it is almost back to normal.

Things must be predictable, no matter what. It takes a lot of discomfort before we move. Initially, we look for new ways to achieve the same, and only after we have been unsuccessful for some time, we discard the past and look for a new future.

There is not one thing in this world, which is consistent. And this is, what the mind wants. What would you call this?

Creation of Time

picture 1 – infinite number of moments

There are millions of possible choices; the amount of simultaneously available moments is enormous. Picture 1 shows those moments arranged like a flat pancake.

From all available choices, the mind selects a routine of moments, which line up. It follows repetitious paths; it runs in circles. I marked one in red in picture 2. This way the

picture 2 – Running in Circles

illusion of constancy is created. This is the reason why changing habits is so difficult. We want consistency but complain about boredom.

Slowly and gradually, this circle moves sidewards, an effect we proudly call development, progress or evolution. What sweet, comforting words they are. This process is what the mind calls time. Time is a progression, tempus fugit.

§

Time has its good sides. Remember a nice meal, time with friends, a beautiful setting in nature, feeling joy, happiness and contentment. Then, we don’t mind at all, when the mind applies this talent of creating a sense of duration. Absorbing a piece of music or a movie and feeling showered with the many sensations would be much reduced without the mind’s ability.

However, if I have attracted, for whatever reason, a splitting headache, why would my mind choose to select next moments where I still have a headache?

Repeating the same moment, perpetually? For how often? To create time, miserable time? There are much more possible moments available, which do not contain a headache. Why not choose one of them and stop the headache, instantly?

Permission for Inconsistency

I pop a pill, and gradually, the headache disappears. In our scientific, logical world, the function of pharmaceuticals is accepted, and as pill poppers, we don’t need to understand the workings.

Most importantly, our mind accepts them as part of its time reality. Therefore, once the pill is popped, the mind stops insisting on consistency but permits a diversion to a moment with a lesser pain level, and the pain declines at an acceptable gradient.

A few hundred years ago, witches and sorcerers were part of our life. They knew how to trigger the mind to let go of the structure of time and to instantly choose a pain-free moment and accept a state of wellbeing. Now you know, how miracle cures work.

They still work amongst all the native (primitive) cultures, cultures with an unbroken link to their heritage, like many of the Asian people and the Indian. More frequently, westerners get desperate enough and courageously consult alternative healers, and they are successful. No surprise.

There are other fields, wherein the mind dares to deviate abruptly and spontaneously because someone with higher authority encourages them, permits and guides them. Religion.

The by far highest-ranking cure for cancers are meditation or spiritual activities.

This demonstrates, it is not outside the mind’s capacity to choose scenarios, which appear inconsistent or miraculous, but for the sake of a baby’s fear of death, the frame of mind has constructed the frame of time. It needs to be hole-proof, foolproof; thus, it must go on, be permanent and consistent. At all cost.

Of two, three Minds

Some of you may be aware of the possibility to have different operating systems on your computer. During boot-up you choose, which one to use. This is how I often feel within myself. One part is entirely clear about what I am writing here. I have no doubt.

I can peruse around and discover more ways of explaining things as they happen in the mind/time continuum. They make much more sense and are simpler than black holes, multiple universes and dimensions, big bangs and curvatures in the space/time continuum (which does not exist, either).

The second part of me observes the first, how it is free, with no aim, and how it follows an inspiration with uninhibited curiosity, open to anything that occurs, being surprised and excited when unwrapping a new arrival.

The third part of me lives his life, within time and constraints. It knows of the other two and wonders about them, mainly about what they might be good for. Admittedly, they are fun.

Where are all the Moments?

If they are lined up, like a string, if one moment follows the next, they may as well be embedded in the structure of time.

picture 3 – Hopping inside a Circle

I imagine them like a pancake; all possible and impossible moments are spread out. They are all present, simultaneously. Once I finish with a moment, I jump up and land on another one, picture 3.

Mostly, I jump to spots close to each other, the landing field is within the red dotted circle. Sometimes I move a little sidewards.

Mostly we hop within a particular context. As time passes, the hopping area slides slowly along the pancake, picture 4.

picture 4 – Moving Circles

The experience of growing older is one of the changes. Then the height of the jumps and the area of context reduce, too.

This scenario explains déjà vue and the reason why memories pop up. People with good memory recall don’t deviate much in their hopping. We say: “See you next time.” Perhaps, we are talking really about the moment next to or nearby the current moment, rather than one down the timeline?

§

Some events make us jump for some distance, winning the lottery, getting married, having a child born are good examples. The landing place is close enough so that we still recognise it as a continuation of this life. At such happy events and moments of startling surprises, we use the phrase, to jump out of one’s skin. The skin, seen as the border of the body… I jump beyond this border. I rest my case.

picture 5 – Circles move further

As I am growing older, the sliding sidewards has increased so much that often I forget or cannot imagine that I had been a different person, once, picture 5. However, this does not only happen at old age.

Years ago I wrote down a timeline of my life in snapshots of seven years, including my outlook on life, on each of those snapshots. If I had returned to the time of such a snapshot and told myself, how my life would change in seven or fourteen years, I would not have believed the information, but rejected it as being impossible or ludicrous.

This demonstrates that some of us do jump further than our mind wants us to know. Through directing our choices, the mind makes changes occur slowly enough, so that the movement, the changes can be hidden.

Bigger Jumps

In the late 80th, I promised myself, whenever an opportunity would arise, which strongly inspires me, I go for it. These spontaneous eruptions would pull me away from the general direction of my path. Following their call would demand much courage.

picture 6 – Circles don’t connect anymore

The inspiration needed to be so strong so that it would supply me with the strength of passion for carrying out the task. I have kept this promise. These challenges lead me to many extraordinary places, picture 6.

In the early 90th, the most consequential impact happened, when Latin music caused my body move. Then, I was in my mid-forties. This was extraordinary. Since I can remember, I believed and had been supported in my belief that I was clumsy and had no sense of rhythm.

In the early days of my dance endeavours, prospective dance partners would hide or find excuses when I approached. Gradually this changed, when I became one of the best Latin dancers in Brisbane, by the mid 90th. Dancing Tango turned into one of my most profoundly moving experiences.

If someone had told me earlier that I would turn into an accomplished dancer and dancing would provide me with such deep feelings, I would never have believed it. There are more examples; none was so significant.

The above shows that we can and do make long jumps, involving major parts of life and beliefs.

§

Especially now, in my early seventies, I become aware of the long jumps in my life where the starting points have become hazy. It feels as if my mind constructs links from here and now, back into the past. Many connections seem shonky, and I wonder if the initiating events they lead back to, have happened the way as they appear, or if they ever occurred.

At moments like that, I shrug. True or not does not matter to me but it seems to matter to my mind. Then, I calm my mind, divert it and engage it in something exciting, something, which happens now. There is always something.

Being Moved

Not all long steps are heroic. Some are not the result of choice. More often than I wished, strong gusts catapulted me more than a bit, more than I wanted, much more than I believed I could take. A blow of destiny, which ripped the carpet out from below my feet…the famous hit by a Mack truck.

It happened several times in my life with the consequence that my life changed dramatically. Without them happening, my life would have taken an entirely different course.

Some early significant changes, I can regard as having promoted my life. Some later ones caused changes, which I still would consider undesirable. They happened almost twenty years ago, and I cannot see any beneficial outcome. Several recent ones I have nothing good to say about.

People say these hard bumps are good for something. I would like to know, for myself, what that is.

Big Leaps

picture 7 – Far distant jumping

What happens, when the leap lands at a moment (a point on the pancake) were this connection of memories does not exist? As an example, this may have happened when all our efforts to remember something are in vain, picture 7.

When this moment of now has another past attached to it and another dream of future? Has this been the case when I remember a childhood and someone, who knew me then tells me something else?

I am now another person, another being, another “I” somewhere, somewhere in the universe, in any universe.

Now, I am writing this… now, I am the reader (you).

§

I had to stop for a moment because my glasses fogged up.

§

In another story, I wrote about the speed of mind (Speed of Mind 120724 – 151026) and in another essay, I demonstrated that the speed is limited (Limited Speed 150908). Neither has been published, yet. The mind can absorb only a restricted amount of information.

The mind is so slow, it does not realise that the flow of information absorbed and processed intermittently. It does not notice the gaps between the segments of information. It does not notice that it stutters.

Like a movie, the flow (of time and life) is created through a sequence of individual images arriving at a speed fast enough, so that the mind cannot distinguish them individually and the illusion of a running reality occurs.

The same in life. The mind joins the snippets it has been able to absorb, seamlessly together. It could notice those little inconsistencies, but it rather does not want to see them. Therefore, it fools itself and makes itself to believe in the continuity of time.

Finally, I, the conscious being, have no idea about this and faithfully call this illusion, reality.

§

The limited absorption rate of the mind and its need to cover up the gaps is the rationale for my hypothesis.

If I jump, fast enough, from here to there so that my mind does not notice that I actually jumped…

If I jump a distance far enough, to where the living-being-here and the living-being-there don’t share past, future or presence….

then, I, my consciousness, can be two beings at two consecutive moments without either of them noticing it.

Don’t worry, I had to read the above several times to get it.

picture 8 – Jumping to and fro

I place here the same picture from above, but now, imagine the green dot jumping from one circle into the other, to and fro, very fast, incredibly fast, picture 8.

Have a rest and brace yourself for the next mental leap.

§

How fast can I jump? How many Is (living beings) can I be before any of their minds realise my absence? Before the movie running on the screens of the minds of the individuals begins to jitter? More than two for sure. Ten, fifty, ten thousand, eight billion?

For how long can this “I” (me!) stay absent before anyone watching this body would notice a flicker in its motion or behaviour, revealing that this body is momentarily not occupied by “me”?

When we watch a movie, all our minds adjust to the same frame per seconds sequence in a cinema or the same refresh-rate on a TV set. No one is aware of this. None of us notices the dark parts in the sequence of images. We are blind to them.

We are also blind to the possible flicker when “I” or “we” or all of us change bodies.

In Summary

The speed of my human mind is limited; therefore it created time. Time does not exist (on the plane of the pancake); all moments are present, simultaneously. When a distance is crossed at no time, the speed must be infinite. Have you noticed the moment when you jump from one moment to the next? Indubitably, they pass.

If the speed is infinite, I can be an infinite number of beings. An infinite number of beings is more than all beings, together. Thus, I can be all beings

I am me, one.

This one, I, can be all beings.

If one I only, can be all beings, there is no need for two.

Then, there is only ONE in all beings.
You and I are the same “I”, but we would not know, we don’t notice, we don’t remember … that we share the almost the same past and future, just not this very moment.